From Farm to Canvas

I live in a very rural part of New York surrounded by farms. The landscape influences my work, but not always in the ways you might imagine. I pass this farm on a back road to the next town. I have stopped a few times to photograph it. What I really love is how the corn crib looks in front of the silo.

Corn crib in front of silo.

It is a curved grid in front of a curved grid. In this photo it appears quite abstract. I love a subject, that is completely real and seems completely abstract.

In the final painting I kept the grid on the right and added a grid from an industrial garage door in New York City on the left. Again it would not surprise me if you could not determine the source of the image. It was the contrast of the flat grid and the curved grid that propelled me. It challenges one’s perception on several levels. The first being that I painted a perfectly representational painting that is utterly abstract. But the flatness on one side and the barely perceptible curve on the other challenges one’s sense of space. Both of these things create a subtle disruption for the viewer.

6 Comments

Bob
on June 19, 2018 at 3:02 pm

Leslie,
This is such a wonderful explanation. I love the photos, and as I mentioned to you that I had deciphered the silo’s I still didn’t quite understand the arrangement and image, which is part of the mystery of abstract art. Thank you for this informing post.

Thank you, Bob. I realized that there was no way for you to know that it was actually a completely representational painting unless I showed you what I was working from. A computer crash made it impossible for me to show you the garage door.

This is such a wonderful explanation. I love the photos, and as I mentioned to you that I had deciphered the silo’s I still didn’t quite understand the arrangement and image, which is part of the mystery of abstract art. Thank you for this informing post.